BitterSweetLife

Today I woke up.

I felt a small, hard center coalesce inside me. My eyes flared to life, steel-blue conduits to a ready brain. My mind stirred and shook itself. The waking sensation felt like humility—an unassuming desire to work hard, apply myself unreservedly, “concentrate on doing your best” (2 Timothy 2:15). It also felt like taking my future in my hands.

Does that seem contradictory? It’s not. For at times God hands us the future. He gives us a divine trajectory and says, “Run.” He gives us a glimpse of His will and sends us to pursue it. At such times we had better lift and train and learn to run. Was any life more active and forceful—and more surrendered—than Christ’s?

So humility emerges, and it’s strangely shaped. Today’s humility: It’s waking up to the need of the moment, the demand for work, hard work and precision, taking up responsibility for my own improvement—as per divine allotment. God works on me, and I work too. How could I do less?

For God expects his people to fight hard and not to coast. He looks for grace-full effort. Less is unacceptable. Better is impossible. So yes, I will work harder, learn better, Jesus—it’s what you ask. This burden of work is one the humble accept and the proud refuse.